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Dr. Vivian Carter was recommended by a new friend of mine, an older investigator I had recently worked with on an unusual case a few weeks back.

Aaron King, who also specialized in finding the missing, had produced her card and tucked it in my shirt pocket. He said only that she would help me, and that she was helping him, too. I hadn't asked for help and I had been mildly offended, but who was I kidding? I was a royal mess, and an old guy like Aaron saw through my feeble charade.Advertisement

Now I was sitting across from her in a lounge chair, unable to meet her direct gaze. She was a lovely woman, older than me by perhaps five or ten years. But I wasn't here to admire her loveliness. I was here because my life was spinning out of control.

"How are you, Mr. Spinoza?"

"I've been better."

The light from her desk lamp reflected off her own thick glasses. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her. She was unmoving and stoic, but also so calm that I found my shyness slipping away quickly. She tilted her head slightly to the right and some of the desk lamp light caught along her slightly upturned nose.

"Tell me about when you've been better."

And so I did. Or I tried to. I told story after story of my life before the tragedies.

Dr. Vivian listened quietly, occasionally nodding encouragingly and sometimes even writing down notes. Mostly she just watched me closely, radiating a calm intensity.

"You keep talking about 'before the accidents'."

I nodded, looking away.

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"Tell me about the accidents."

And so I did that, too. I found myself going over my wife's car accident in detail. Or as much of it as I could, since I had not been there. She had been coming home from work. It had been raining. Her car, as best as anyone could figure out, had slid out of control. I knew my wife. She was a great driver. Some asshole piece of shit had probably cut her off. I knew it. I felt it in the very marrow of my bones. He had cut her off and she had swerved and lost control and went spinning across the slippery freeway. She had hit the center divider head on, only to be hit immediately after by a tour bus cruising down the carpool lane. A tour bus that had been speeding recklessly, no doubt.

Dr. Vivian listened to all of this calmly, compassionately, making sympathetic sounds where appropriate.

She asked me a few more questions and I found myself explaining the hate I had felt - still felt - for everything, especially God and my wife's alleged guardian angels and anyone responsible for her death. I hated the phantom car that cut her off, and I loathed the tour bus driver.

In the past, I had always turned to drinking as an escape; after her death, my drinking got ten times worse. My employer, with a heavy heart, eventually fired me.

I next described my utter neglect of my little boy, who was suddenly without his mother, and now without a father, too. My neglect for him led to more drinking. I was trying to kill myself, I knew it. I couldn't stand the pain of living. I couldn't stand the fact that I would never, ever see my wife again.

"You said accidents, Mr. Spinoza," she said quietly, calmly, leading me along gently, expertly.

I took a deep breath and plunged forward, describing the night I was to take my son to a birthday party in the Hollywood Hills. It had been the sixth month anniversary of my wife's accident, and I had taken it pretty hard. I was so drunk that I don't even remember driving along the twisty Mulholland Drive. My memory only begins when my car veered off the road and down into the trees several dozens of feet below. I had been ejected, but my son hadn't been so lucky. I was so badly hurt and drunk that I was incapable of piecing together what had just happened. It was then that I felt the fire behind me...and heard the strangled cries. I remember turning around on my hands and knees, in the dirt and bushes, as blood poured from a head wound, and seeing my son through the windshield.

Still strapped in his seatbelt.

As the fire engulfed him.

We were silent a long, long time. I was aware of the clock ticking behind me. It just might have been the loudest clock I'd ever heard. In fact, it was nearly driving me nuts. I forced myself to calm down as I wiped the tears away.

Without her prompting, I went on to describe the year I had spent in jail for vehicular manslaughter. And my life these past two years, sober and alone and hurting unlike anything I thought was possible.

It was then that Dr. Vivian came to life. She stood from her chair and walked carefully around her oversized desk and sat down in front of me in a client chair. She was a professional. That much was obvious. I saw all the degrees on her walls as proof.

But she was also human, and she leaned forward and gave me the biggest hug I'd ever been given and the tears flowed. Hers and mine.

Finally, she pulled back, wiping her cheeks, and said, "I'll deny I ever did that, but if anyone ever needed a hug, Mr. Spinoza, it was you. See you next week." pqdm.com